


unfortunate

by smallredboy



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: 75th Hunger Games, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Collection: Purimgifts Day 2, Gen, Menstruation, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-21
Updated: 2019-03-21
Packaged: 2019-11-01 09:30:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17864837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallredboy/pseuds/smallredboy
Summary: Rue deals with the Quarter Quell announcement quite poorly.





	unfortunate

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Wildcard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wildcard/gifts).



> part two! 
> 
> i hope you enjoy!!

Her mother never told her about this.

She doesn't know if she should be going through this. But her stomach spasms in pain, and she can't stop checking her underwear as her panic rises in the bathroom.

It's _blood_. It doesn't look like the blood recently shed in the battlefield, the blood that tinted the Cornucopia red, but it smells like it. All she can think of is Thresh bleeding out at the Cornucopia, Thresh apologizing to her while delirious like it's somehow his fault.

And she regrets all of it— she has won out of pure luck, and now she's here, sick to her stomach, bleeding from down there, her waist and thighs hurting as her stomach gets more upset. She throws up into the toilet and it flushes.

She stands up with shaky legs and looks through the bathroom, looking for anything that will help her with this. After a while, she finds some cotton thing, long, that when she puts on it wraps around her bottom comfortably. She can feel herself bleed, and she hates it.

She goes to her stylist afterward, calling her on her phone at the Victors’ Village. She's scared, sure, of the threat of President Snow, his words of it's her family or obeying him, and God, she'll take sacrificing her dignity before sacrificing her siblings, her mother

“Plaet, don’t laugh at me, but,” she starts, “is it normal to bleed down there? It doesn't… I didn't cut myself or anything, it just…”

Plaet sounds like she's shining with pride when she says, “Rue, you're a woman now! Thirteen, aren't you? That's older than most women at the Capitol!”

Rue reaches for a chair and sits down. “It's… normal?”

“It happens to every woman with the means to not be starving,” she says. “It's normal.”

The Quarter Quell announcement is tomorrow, and she's dealing with her downstairs problem, and she doesn't think she can take it.

She watches the TV with her mother and her siblings, all of them huddling around her. She's scared of whatever it will be; because she'll have to lead two innocent children like she was into almost certain death. She can't do that— she can't do that.

President Snow speaks, and he opens the package and starts reading off it. Her heart drops and she stands up, running to the bathroom and feeling her throat closing. She lets out quick breaths, her brain fogging up as she cries, unable to deal with all this at once.

“No!” she screams, because she can't deal with it again, she can't go back to the Games again. But there’s no other option, no other female victor from District 11.

She's doomed. Her stomach cramps up and she falls to her knees, crying hysterically as pain both physical and emotional takes ahold of her.

Her mother opens the door and envelops her into such a tight hug it hurts her, her twig-like arms embracing her back.

What else can she do but take this? She can feel something brewing up inside the Districts, can hear President Snow's anxiety as much as he hides it, but as much as she is a symbol, she knows it won't last long.

“I'm so sorry, sweetheart,” her mother breathes like a blessing into her curls over and over, digging her nails into her clothed back. She sobs, and she sobs louder than Rue herself.

She holds her mother, comforts her because she can't do much more but lean into her family in times like this.

She is thirteen years old (she is a woman, apparently), and she doesn't want this.

 


End file.
